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This hadn’t been the plan, not really. The portal needed to be blown up before the GIW could send a nuke through, but they had wanted to evacuate the town before hitting the button to blow up the portal.
They hadn’t expected the GIW blockade, including the ghost shield around the town. There were GIW forces surrounding the entire town, there was nowhere to sneak through, and the ghost shield went underground. Danny had checked.
They were blocked in. No one could get out.
Now Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and Danny sat in Sam’s room, staring at each other.
“What are we supposed to do?” Danny whispered. “There’s too many agents, and there are too many protections against ghosts and people.”
“We can’t let them nuke the Zone, that would destroy everything. On both sides.” Sam said.
“But if we destroy the portal…” Jazz trailed off.
“It would blow up the whole town.” Tucker finished. “That much backlash energy… who knows how far the destruction would reach.”
“So, what do we do?” Danny asked. How could they decide? If they failed to stop the GIW, it would mean the end of everything. But if they went through with their plan, then… the whole town would die. His friends would die. His sister and parents would die. And what would happen to him? Would he become a full ghost? Would he be Ended?
“We need to do it.” Jazz said. “It’s–it’s the only real option. We’ll die either way.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
Danny kept hoping Clockwork would intervene, would make the GIW disappear, or let Danny go back in time to stop everything sooner.
“I agree.” Sam whispered, drawing her knees to her chest. Danny and Tucker scooted closer to her, leaning against her sides. Jazz sat next to Danny and draped her arm over his shoulders.
“Tomorrow.” Tucker said. “They aren’t planning on nuking the Zone till tomorrow evening. So, we’ll act tomorrow morning. We deserve one more night before…”
“Yeah, tomorrow.” Danny said.
They spent the rest of the day together, curled into each other, talking quietly, or watching movies, playing Doomed. But mostly they just sat silently together. Danny only left once to check on the GIW to make sure plans hadn’t changed.
They fell asleep all curled up together.
The next morning, there were tears and hugging before they sat gathered in a circle around the remote detonator.
“There’s just… one more thing.” Jazz said, sharing a glance with Tucker and Sam before getting up and grabbing something from Sam’s dresser behind Danny.
His friends shared a look before turning to him.
“Danny…” Sam started. Tears were welling up in her eyes, and Danny’s eyes started to well up again. “Just remember we all love you. And you deserve a second chance.”
“What are you–” Danny started, but then there was a click behind him, and he was enveloped in blue light.
—--
Way up, in a secret satellite orbiting the planet, sensors began to scream as screens flashed. Heroes rushed to see what had happened. The data indicated a huge burst of energy had originated from somewhere in Illinois, an area that, according to mapping data, was supposed to be uninhabited.
But when Batman looked into it to see what the possible source could have been, he came across government censors. His fingers froze above the keyboard for a second before he began issuing commands for a reconnaissance mission.
Whatever had happened, Batman was almost positive, it was not without casualties.
And he was right.
The center of the destruction stretched on for miles of barren land originating from a large crater. And the towns nearby were showing signs of destruction as well as the effects that were associated with nuclear radiation. Most of the League had gone to those areas to help, but Batman, Superman, and Martian Manhunter had remained to investigate the starting location.
So far, they had found nothing. But then Martian Manhunter had paused.
“What is it?” Batman asked.
“I sense a presence. They are barely aware, and their thoughts are muffled, but there is someone here.”
Batman and Superman followed Manhunter toward a seemingly empty patch of land. “Under here.” he said.
Superman scanned the ground before he began digging through the dirt. It wasn’t long before he pulled up a small cylindrical object that resembled a– thermos?
“The presence is coming from in there.” Manhunter said.
Batman frowned. “We’ll take it with us. We can investigate further in the Watchtower once we’ve made sure it wasn’t the source of the explosion.”
They headed back to the ship. Batman looked once more over the destruction. He couldn’t help but think that this could have been prevented if he’d noticed something sooner. There was something that he had missed. And it wasn’t just that this area looked uninhabited on maps. Someone had gone to great effort to hide something here. He’d need to look into it. Find out what had been hidden.
He looked at the thermos that Superan carried. Hopefully, whoever, or whatever, was in that thermos could help. And hopefully, the League would be able to make up for not preventing this in the first place.